Rundown on the state of social

Quick temperature check on a bunch of stuff from your fav forum nerd since the 90s

Still from The Rum Diary (amazing flick)

Someone asked me the other day why there aren’t ‘new’ social networks anymore. The simple answer is it’s a mature product category and while there was a point we’d all switch platforms every 4 years or whatever, the railroad tracks have been laid down. No one wants to constantly re-learn the language of new tools and rebuild the same networks again and again, it’s pointless busywork, we’ve played this game already. The internet is mature enough it must mirror the real world here, and we need places with staying power over time. It’s underrated important to have this and we actually have for awhile, there are forums I’ve been part of for decades that still exist (networking online is a solved problem, honestly). The situation is very similar to cell phones: note how many people still post about getting a new one (which makes me laugh) but it’s all very boring as no new feature is going to change your life. The behavior is pure conditioning, but things change.

So other than a group that literally only cares about what’s new or next, and then the group who hate everything and go from network to network looking for things to be upset at and ultimately leave (neither of these want to be part of actual online communities that exchanges ideas long term) people are pretty happy with their choices. I feel mildly gaslit when trad media talks poorly about a product I use most friends are reasonably fine with, but that’s always been the case. Nothing new here: they’ve never really understood how the internet works, and would be much happier if the old gatekeepers of culture were put back in charge. If you’re excited for the beaurocratic creative state to have more power and in exchange receive infinitely more terrible sequels, I don’t know who hurt you.

Anyway, thought today it would be fun to share a rundown with first thoughts that come to mind on the state of a few major online social products, in no particular order.

Facebook: I was a very early user post launch while in college in 2005/2006, forget the specific year I joined, but now it’s useful mostly for seeing family and pet pictures and wholesome memes. We also have a local group for our community to hear about food trucks. Surprisingly they do a decent job serving niche interest content to me here (I get posts about obscure electronic music from 20 years ago, etc). You can’t really post serious ideas here, nor would you want to (no one is going to link a Facebook post anywhere in a long form blog post, for ex, and they probably shouldn’t). Their main algo actually is somewhat better these days and has stopped serving me as much slop but this definitely exists too. It’s fine, but if it went away tomorrow my life would be precisely the same. Altogether not a serious place.

Substack/Beehiiv: blogging is back and if you aren’t on one of these for personal publishing you probably don’t care about network effects and growing rapidly (fine for some who just wish to journal privately or if you already have a large audience and don’t need benefits of a platform, I totally get it). But for those who want a simple solution these are the new definitive places for serious long form publishing (Medium faded, WordPress is embroiled in fighting, etc). Especially if you’re interested in monetization (Beehiiv is particularly great at ads, as an advertiser during my day job I get a lot of benefit from that side of the trade). I am of course partial to the community aspects of Substack and choose to publish my personal site here these days, but if I were purely trying to make a living online I would also consider Beehiiv because of the ad revenue. Both are great, what blogging should have been from the beginning.

Twitter/X: you might not like it, but humans around the world can post without fear of being banned for “badspeak” and honestly, that’s pretty important. People in the UK are currently being jailed for this so be thankful if you live in America, we are free and not under a dystopian nanny state regime (for now). You might not like Elon or whatever. I’m sorry it just doesn’t bother me, and I think we still need Twitter (and if not that, something like it, but that’s what we have). I know some of you get upset at certain things on a forum like this but a reminder Twitter is tame in the scheme of things, some of you have a short memory or simply weren’t there: we’ve had forums that were far worse. Most of my centrist and heterodox friends are there, we have a good time, we even get paid to post now which is cool. Other than spammers/bots, which exist everywhere, it’s real and authentic, which is how the internet should be. I’ve met >1,000 people from there the world over, all beliefs and backgrounds. All very kind IRL. Also while they too throttle our hyperlinks, it’s still not nearly as bad as Facebook or LinkedIn, you can still get some reasonably predicable referral traffic. Follow me here if you don’t. Oh also, friends on Twitter were hugely consequential in helping me get sober, start lifting and lead a better life. I can’t say this about anywhere else.

Bluesky/Threads: Bluesky at least has an ethos, there are people there that want a more moderated version of Twitter, likely lean far left and have whatever beef with Elon or some feature change of Twitter (an odd catalyst for a social network, but the world is odd). The vibes are a bit like the internet equivalent of Portlandia. Threads on the other hand doesn’t really have identity or purpose and the content is mostly slop, because why would anyone with anything to say give their ideas to Meta for free? I wrote on this before and nothing has changed: they’re just no upside, and you’re basically just enriching their shareholders. Feels like Google+, large company thirsty for users and will perhaps gift you some scraps of attention from their larger properties for showing up. A certain sect in tech only knows how to get attention from being early to things, it’s their one skill (perhaps a ZIRP phenomenon). I don’t know why it exists other than to give Instagram users a “mall-like” place to have text discussions with the anodyne normies. Not for me, and I’m bored just writing about it again. I don’t know that there’s a dollar figure they could pay me to use it.

Instagram/TikTok: true brain rot. What are you doing with your life posting or scrolling here, anon? If you’re there as a marketer or to understand trends as part of your job I completely understand. You’re basically paid to be there. Everyone else I’m sorry you’re going through this.

Reddit: my Subreddits about very niche interests like tropical fish remain fun places. But any of the larger Subreddits are fully cooked by pedantic mods with strange political agendas who don’t like anyone posting anything that goes against their feelings. In a lot of ways it’s become the worst of the internet and simply a frustrating experience as a user. I’ve been there for 16 years and a lot of it has fallen from a place of exodus from Digg, slowly losing the picture of who they were, to turn into an odd network and lagging indicator of what was popular a few years ago. The more niche interest stuff is still fine though, because there’s no power to be had from mods bullying these communities.

Pinterest: fine for shopping wish lists and party mood boards for people who want an app to do that. I don’t personally use it but understand the utility for those who do. Not really a starting point for any culture or trends I care about personally. Big if you’re a wedding planner.

Wikipedia: fully cooked by people with extreme political agendas: historic figures and events throughout history nitpicked for silly things, everyone defined as “problematic.” Any major topic that goes against what the state or enough editors believe is thoroughly sanitized to have the “approved” view. It’s fine for mathematics and basic definitions of things where there’s really no way to insert some sort of biased worldview. But I don’t see it as a serious source of information any longer, particularly when many citations are tortured academic papers (note: 1,000s are being retracted for falsehoods and fraud) and trad media sources you already can’t trust. Use AI tools instead, and of course ask the AI where exactly it sourced the information from a few times. Do your own research. It’s depressing it’s come to this, Wikipedia is a great idea in theory but in practice it doesn’t work. I would trust Encyclopedia Britannica far more here, adults are in charge.

LinkedIn: I don’t mind the real conversations when they come up, as there’s some people posting there earnestly that don’t have the drive or desire to be part of open internet conversations. Which is fine and understandable. That’s just not for everyone, many seek safe spaces and want a conversation with a smaller network. But in the midst of this there’s so much thirst-posting, cringe memes, and obvious bait in an attempt to build followings and sell that attention back to brands for sponsorships it’s always equal parts cesspool. LinkedIn ads are quite expensive so there’s real incentive for people to do this. If I didn’t have to post here for work projects I probably wouldn’t post at all, if I’m being completely honest. Somehow this is one of the oddest places online, a non-trivial percent of posts I see are irredeemable and a small piece of me dies every time I open the product. There are ways to do better but I get the distinct sense they aren’t interested (hope to be wrong).

YouTube: this continues to be a brilliant place, one of my favorite spots online, and if they were a stand alone public company it should be valued higher than NFLX. My algo-selected feed on my homepage is a mix of philosophy and science lectures, creative vlogs on contemporary media and other wonderful things to learn about the world and think creatively. I wish they’d let me dismiss the YouTube shorts box forever, I want 2 minute videos as much as I want a swarm of hornets with my coffee. Why Google is trying to play this game and lobotomize their users I still don’t really understand. Also don’t get why anyone would elect to open TikTok over this, it would be like choosing to eat bugs over a fresh ribeye steak. Granted I mostly just compute using my workstation as I still care about ergonomics (we should do a post on this at some point, that so much of the population doesn’t even know why you would prefer this).

SoundCloud: this is still the main home on the internet I host my music, and also happily use it as my main streaming experience (Spotify remains somewhat indie-artist hostile, and their algo makes me not really like it for music although I don’t mind the podcast experience). If you want unique, creative work and to opt out of the pop slop join us. Although of note I have my music collection via local files and prefer to listen that way anyway. Music in the cloud isn’t better when you have uncompressed wav files locally.

Quick wrap…

There are more networks and products than this of course, I just thought it fun to jot down thoughts that came to mind on a few of them. Use what works well for you, and if you’re able to get what you want out of it that’s great and really all that matters. When you have strong personal values and know what you want from the world all this becomes a lot easier.